Decoding India’s Proposed Online Porn Ban – I

*If we accept that nothing is wrong with sexual arousal, what is wrong in reading a text or watching a cartoon, online porn, or using a powder to create sexual arousal?*

This is the fourth in a series of posts reporting on the day-long “Connect Your Rights!” meeting held in Mumbai in November 2013. The meeting explored topics such as tools to combat violence against women, pornography, sexuality, and freedoms and risks in the online world.

“Can the state ban visiting Khajuraho?” asked writer and blogger Ramya Pandyan when views about the proposed ban on online pornography were invited. The comparison hits at the root of the debate on whether the government should clamp down on watching online adult pornography.

A public interest litigation (PIL) was filed in the Supreme Court in April 2013 pressing for a ban on cyber pornography by blocking websites and criminalising the consumption of pornography. “Pornography is like moral cancer that is eating our entire society at every second across country… It is more catastrophic than nuclear holocaust, and it must be stopped,” states Kamlesh Vaswani, an Indore-based lawyer in the PIL.